It's Memorial day and a holiday, which prompted my going out for dim sum at a popular restaurant in the SGV (San Gabriel Valley, home to the most diverse collection of different regional Chinese cuisines outside China) .
Despite my ethnic heritage and my familiarity with the cuisine, every time I go, I feel a sense of dis-ease; despite my sharing an ethnic heritage with all the restaurant staff and a vast majority of the patrons, it's still like visiting another country and I often observe what goes on around me not unlike an anthropologist observing a native culture.
I can hear Cantonese being spoken by everyone around me, though it's not possible to make out any single conversation. I imagine that there are a series of mating calls going on in how the ladies pushing the carts call out the items on their carts to the people sitting at the tables as they pass by. I observe the plumage of various individual... specimens. Women clutching "Guccci" bags (with three "C"s), men sporting watches bearing the name "ROLLEXX".
For all that, even though I make these observations with more than a little bemusement, I am aware that I am the Klingon in the room. And this contributes to my sense of shame - which is VERY asian.
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